It appears that Barack Obama may win the U.S. presidential election in a landslide, but is there more to the picture?

The global economic meltdown, largely caused by the actions of the Bush administration, will most likely have serious repercussions on the U.S. economy shortly after the January 2009 inauguration, a fact which has led many to speculate that Obama and the Democrats are being set up for a fall.
Republican Herbert Hoover was inaugurated as president on March 4, 1929, but a little over six months later, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 shocked the nation, the U.S. economy crashed and burned, and the Great Depression began.
Hoover was blamed for the Great Depression, even though the laissez-faire economic policies of the two previous Republican presidents, Warren G. Harding (1921–1923) and Calvin Coolidge (1923–1929), were largely to blame.
As a matter of fact, the economic policies of the Harding and Coolidge administrations are eerily similar to the economic policies pursued by the Bush administration over the past eight years.
Deregulation, rampant speculation, tax reductions, and a general subservience to the wealthy, to the detriment of the poor and middle class, were the order of the day during the Harding and Coolidge administrations.
Hoover lost the 1932 election to Franklin Roosevelt and probably never really had a chance since most voters blamed him for the Great Depression.
Could the Republicans be hoping that history repeats itself?
Has John McCain been asked to fall on his sword for the party to ensure a Republican victory in 2012?
Perhaps that’s the reason for McCain’s sardonic smile.
And there have been a number of suspicious moves by the GOP.
The Republicans allowed the charisma deficient McCain to win the nomination. Then he selected Sarah Palin as his running mate, who has succeeded in alienating a large segment of the electorate.
And the McCain campaign has been a catastrophe. The campaign seems nasty, and McCain and Palin appear to be bereft of ideas. In addition, at a time when George W. Bush’s popularity has been plummeting, McCain has not distanced himself from the lame-duck president.
Meanwhile, Obama’s campaign has been soaring, and he may win in a landslide. Obama is expected to win a number of traditionally Republican states. He is even doing well in the polls in some states in the South, such as Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida, and may win as many as five Southern states, which would radically alter the political landscape for years to come.
If Obama wins several states in the South, the Republicans will be in serious trouble in the 2010 Congressional elections and the 2012 presidential election.
That is, unless something happens that changes the situation, which may be what the Republicans are banking on.
The Democrats are surely aware of all this, but they are also surely aware that there can be no quick fix for the economy.
After FDR defeated Hoover in the 1932 election, the Democrats went on to win the next four presidential elections, which allowed them to stay in the White House for two decades, and the Republicans were left out in the cold for 20 years.
Today’s Democrats definitely do not want to suffer a similar fate. However, with the global economic crisis about to spin out of control, the Democrats will have to use all of their resources to avoid falling victim to the Republicans’ November surprise strategy.